Aggressive load in gcc when accessing escaped pointer?

[Cy Cheng]

Hi,

Please look at this c code:

typedef struct _PB {
  void* data;  /* required.*/
  int   f1_;
  float f2_;
} PB;

PB** bar(PB** t);

void qux(PB* c) {
  bar(&c);              /* c is escaped because of bar */
  c->f1_ = 0;
  c->f2_ = 0.f;
}

// gcc-5.2.1 with -fno-strict-aliasing -O2 on x86
call    bar
movq    8(%rsp), %rax      <= load pointer c
movl    $0, 8(%rax)
movl    $0x00000000, 12(%rax)

// intel-icc-13.0.1 with -fno-strict-aliasing -O2 on x86
call      bar(_PB**)
movq      (%rsp), %rdx      <= load pointer c
movl      %ecx, 8(%rdx)
movq      (%rsp), %rsi       <= load pointer c
movl      %ecx, 12(%rsi)

GCC only load pointer c once, but if I implement bar in such way:
PB** bar(PB** t) {
  char* ptr = (char*)t;
  *t = (PB*)(ptr-8);
   return t;
}

Does this volatile C99 standard rule
(http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1256.pdf):

   6.5.16 Assignment operators

   "3. ... The side effect of updating the stored value of the left operand
    shall occur between the previous and the next sequence point."

Thanks,
CY